From the Mind of Trevor Stone

Shadow Boxing Day: Keeping mellow with melomel

Wed, 04 Feb 2026 08:59:36 GMT

As Boxing Day is to Christmas, so Shadow Boxing Day (February 3rd) is to Groundhog Day. Shadow Boxing Day is a day to get shit done that you've been putting off. [previously] Although I've been funemployed for five months, there's a lot of tasks that seem like a good idea, but I just don't get around to them. Like, why haven't I brewed anything yet? Shadow Boxing Day is close enough to Imbolc that making mead will count as celebration of Brigid the brewer.

We spent July 4th of last year bottling four carboys that had been sitting on the counter for years; the newest from 2021 and the oldest from 2018. Part of the problem was that home brewing is mostly "clean your kitchen" and then a little bit of "mix stuff in a pot." I would occasionally clean the kitchen on a Saturday, be too tired to brew on Sunday, and by the time there was another clear weekend the kitchen would be dirty again. Now that I've got counter space back and I can summon the energy to clean on something other than a free weekend, the zymurgy hobby is back on the table (so to speak).

Kelly and I made a honeymoon mead starting in late 2015. We were inspired by a mead shared at Dragonfest that year made from Brazilian wildflower honey, so we ordered a 60 pound bucket of the stuff. That's enough for three or four 5-gallon batches, and I've used it a few times since. But the results were coming out with a fairly harsh off-flavor, likely a result of fermenting at too high of a temperature: the yeast are stressed out, and you taste the result of them not doing their best work. I also wasn't getting inspired with new ideas for that particular honey, so it sat all lonely in a corner.

Honey is a pretty amazing substance. I can't think of many other foods that can sit half-empty in a closet for a decade and still be worth eating. But honey is anti-microbial, so the only challenge is that a lot of it had crystalized. Fortunately, our house has a nice low-tech way to get honey flowing: I left the bucket on our sun porch for a week, occasionally digging around with a spoon to shift the crystal clumps. The flavor is still nice: not too sweet and with a bit of a mysterious taste to match the dark amber color. I decided it could do well as a pomegranate mead, and found some unfiltered, unsweetened 100% pomegranate juice from Armenia at our local Middle Eastern shop. Having learned the yeast-fermentation-temperature lesson from my initial wine yeast brews, I picked up an English Ale yeast with an ideal temperature range of 64° to 79°F. Room temperature sits in the middle, and now that we've got a heat pump we might be able to keep the kitchen below 80° in the summer. My 2021 cyser with British Ale yeast turned out well, and was able to survive into the 12% alcohol range.

I normally take fairly precise measurements while home brewing, but not today. (Relax, don't worry, have a homebrew.) This melomel has "about 7 pounds" of honey, measured by lifting the honey bucket with an analog luggage scale, then lifting the empty bucket afterwards. I added "about a gallon" of warm water by filling a quart jar four times, then four liters of juice ('cause it's imported), then "about four liters" of water in those juice jars, so I could get the last bits of sediment into the brew. There's also somewhere between an extra 3 quarters to one whole cup of water from mixing the yeast and nutrient, plus rinsing the last of the must from the pot into the carboy. That gives "a little more than three gallons of liquid," plus the volume of honey. This should work perfectly; it's got plenty of surface area for primary fermentation in a 5-gallon glass carboy, and I can then rack it to a 3 gallon carboy for secondary, leaving behind what I expect to be rather a lot of trub: the pomegranate juice was quite cloudy.

The Internet has a bunch of opinions about fermentation vessels, with most commentators discouraging using a carboy for primary fermentation; the narrow neck increases the risk of blow-outs and reduces surface area for the initial aerobic phase. My theory is that "3.5 gallons in a 5 gallon carboy" solves both of those risks, and since I'm not planning to rack to secondary for two months I'd rather it sit in glass than plastic. Plus, I think this one will be fun to watch.

The pre-fermentation taste of the must is more subtle than I expected: a little sweetness at the front, followed by subtle pomegranate flavor—including a hint of the white pith—and then back to honey flavor at the finish. If you didn't know it was pomegranate, it might take a bit to place it. We'll see if this turns into a lovely dry melomel (just 12% potential alcohol), or if that fruit flavor disappears through primary. I got a couple jars of pure pomegranate syrup which I might add in secondary fermentation if necessary; that stuff is tart and tangy on pancakes.

I've got a couple other jugs of honey waiting for a round tuit now that I'm re-building my zymurgy reflexes. I got some wildflower honey from a Rocky Ford farmstand in 2024, and should probably start that fermenting now so we can add some fresh melons to secondary this summer, giving a better shot of retaining the cantaloupe flavor than starting with fruit chunks in the must. I also stopped for a hand-made "LOCAL HONEY" sign along highway 16 in the Arkansas Ozarks in 2022, not too far from Ben Hur and the Pedestal Rocks trailhead. I'm really not sure what to make with that one, so maybe I should start it as a traditional and see what the flavor suggests. I think there are also some Palisade peaches in the freezer waiting for a project…

comments

Bottle Late Than Never

Mon, 07 Jul 2025 06:44:11 GMT

Most of this four-day weekend was devoted to bottling homebrew. Since yeast do the real work, most of the human labor in home brewing is cleaning. There have been four carboys sitting on the kitchen counter for four years and change because every time I would clean the kitchen on a Saturday with the goal of bottling on a Sunday, I wouldn't end up with the energy to follow through the next day. Then a week later, the kitchen would be dirty again, and it would be a month or two before there was time to consider the project again. Since this is the first Independence Day weekend in three years that we haven't gotten a shelter cat, we coordinated with Kelly's friend Jim to come over on Saturday to help. Having an external party deadline, plus two weekdays off work, helped motivate some house cleaning, and we were almost ready to go when he arrived.

The pending potables dated back to 2018. I made a cyser with apple cider from a community pressing that fall. I didn't really procrastinate on bottling this one: I siphoned out several bottles over time, but they all had too strong of an alcohol flavor that I like to describe as "The yeast are angry." I think this is due to fermentation at too high a temperature (my house doesn't have a great cool place), which releases a lot of unwanted esters. Advice from the Yeastherders Gatherum had been to just give it more time;. After six years on the counter, when I brought a bottle last year, it was really well received. Good things are worth waiting for.

While the cyser was in its early stages of aging, I successfully bottled at least twice. The straight cider from that year was bottled with no drouble. And the next fall I bought an all-grain system from a coworker. I made a dunkel weizen to learn how to do an all-grain brew, and bottled a month later. Awkwardly, I haven't done a whole grain beer since…

The bottling procrastination began with my red braggot misadventures in 2020. At the start of COVID lockdown I headed to the homebrew store for beer ingredients, figuring that being stuck at home would be a great opportunity to try some brewing. March and April 2020 turned out to be pretty distracting, and I didn't get around to cleaning the kitchen plus energy to brew until late May. I put the hops and red malt in the pot for half an hour, then discovered that my liquid malt extract had gone moldy while sitting around for two months. Not wanting to waste part of a brew, I switched my plan from a 50%/50% malt/honey braggot to a 3:1 or 4:1 mix with a little less volume and no aroma hops. 2020 continued to be distracting (remember doomscrolling?) so June rolled by without bottling, then July, and then the onset of "ugh, I cleaned the kitchen, I can't possibly accomplish anything else this weekend.

2021 brought a return to "go out in the world and do things. It was also a good year for apples in Boulder County, so I spent a weekend with good folks first shaking apple trees, then squishing apples. I got home Sunday night and put sulfites in five gallons of apple cider in a bucket and started a three gallon batch of cyser with a different honey. Monday night I pitched yeast in the cider, Tuesday we packed for Element 11, Utah's regional burn. Normally I would rack from the bucket to the carboy after a week or two. "We just got back from a Burn" is clearly not enough energy to clean the kitchen. The next weekend was also in energy recovery mode. And once again the cycle began. I finally had the time and energy to rack it to secondary two months later, probably on Thanksgiving weekend. And then I discovered that either the sulfites hadn't killed all the wild microbes, or the several inches of headroom in the fermenting bucket and a little unsanitary spot had allowed a significant layer of pellicle to form on top of the liquid. I was worried the project was ruined, but I racked it to a carboy anyway and planned to check the Internet for solutions. I put a quart of it in a separate bottle for investigation. I drank that over the ensuing weeks and it wasn't terrible, nor did I get sick. So now I just needed a plan for dealing with the pellicle.

2022 through 2024 continued to be distracting. I had a lot of vacation time saved up coming out of the pandemic, so I spent a lot of 2022 planning for, at, or returning from a fun adventure. In 2023 I got really into Parks on the Air, so any weekend with good weather was a lot more tempting to spend an afternoon playing radio than cleaning and bottling. 2023 and 2024's 4-day weekends in July were filled with Dead shows and new cats, and the November 4-day weekends had turned into "get ready for Advent of Code." I was at least responsible enough not to start any new homebrew projects while there were four carboys awaiting.

After twelve hours of moving fluids around, resterilizing equipment, and "relax, don't worry, have a homebrew," the complete bottle array looks kind of smaller than I'd imagined. The contents are pretty good, though. The previous night I racked the cider to the bucket, leaving the pellicle layer behind. I put a quarter teaspoon of potassium metasulfite in overnight, so hopefully that prevents anything from redeveloping in the bottle. The taste is quite dry and a little funky; it won't be to everyone's liking, but Jim liked it. The red braggot came out a dark amber, almost brown, with about 9% alcohol. It also left some interesting colors and shapes at the bototm of the carboy, and it's going to take several attempts to scrub the carboy completely clean. The 2018 cyser has mellowed pretty nicely and has a decent flavor, while packing a punch at 15% alcohol. The 2021 cyser is probably the best of the bunch: it started at 14% potential alcohol, but finished with 3% remaining: I used a British ale yeast instead of a wine yeast, so it can't hit ABV in the teens. This means it's remarkably sweet, preserving a lot of they honey flavor (though not so much of the apple). It also finished remarkably clear, a light gold color you can see through, while the 2018 cyser is a dark orange. I suspect the color difference is due to the honey: an American blend for 2021 and Brazilian wildflower in 2018.

Making mead with ale yeasts is something I'll have to pursue further. I'd been following the practices of other yeastherders and brewing with wine yeasts, which can generally process all the sugar you can pack in with honey. But a beer-strength yeast lets more sugars remain, better preserving the sweetness and character of the honey. Plus, I think there are more high-temperature ale yeasts than there are wine yeasts, for those of us without a cellar.

comments

Kitchen Misadventures

Mon, 25 May 2020 07:28:22 GMT

In mid-March when COVID-19 restrictions started to come into place in Colorado I stopped by my friendly local homebrew store to get some ingredients. "Not being able to leave home for several weeks sounds like a great opportunity to make some beer." The Yeast Herders Gatherum at Dragonfest recently started doing annual challenges, and one of this year's is a braggot, which is alcohol made from a combination of honey and grain sugar. I've been thinking about braggot options for several months, but hadn't hit on a recipe I really liked. I decided that following something resembling an Irish red ale would be a decent first braggot experiment and at least ought to look interesting. 4 pounds sparkling amber liquid malt extract, 1 pound red malt, five pounds of Brazilian wildflower honey from the 50 pound bucket we ordered years ago.

But then I got pulled into other weekend projects, and come late may the only thing I'd gotten fermenting was a continuous brew jun kombucha. (The jun style has yeast and bacteria adapted to green tea and honey rather than black tea and sugar and boy howdy do I have a lot more green tea and honey in my kitchen.)

So a rainy day on Memorial Day weekend, two months after picking up the supplies, became the day to finally get around to making this braggot. I spent four and a half hours cleaning the kitchen, gathering brewing supplies, remembering how this all works, realizing I hadn't started an extract beer for almost two years. I heated a gallon of water and put the "Viking Red" malted barley in my metal steeping basket. After that steeped for about 45 minutes I sparged it into the big brew pot. Then I opened my container of liquid malt extract…

… and discovered it had developed several spots of mold on the surface while sitting on the counter for two months. Crap.

I briefly considered scraping the top layer off and brewing with the rest. That's totally what my European ancestors would've done, right? It'll be boiled for an hour, and then the hops and later alcohol will keep the micro-organisms at bay, right?

I thought about it, and realized that "Hope there's no mold in here" would be hanging in the back of my head any time I went to drink a beer, and that thought is definitely going to detract from the flavor.

So I called an audible and decided to make a "mostly mead" braggot rather than the half-and-half plan I had. So I started adding honey to the warm malt wort. (If I'd thought about it a little harder I probably would've boiled the red wort first, so we'll see if the small malt flavor is even detectable in the end.) The honey in the bucket has been starting to crystalize, so scooping out five pounds worth was something of an adventure, but it dissolved fairly nicely.

I then cast around the kitchen for other things I could add to the pot which might bring more interest to the brew, since my "nice balance of honey and malt flavors" plan was defunct. I tossed in some freeze-dried ginger bits, not having fresh ginger on hand. And then I realized that maybe I should add some of the hops I'd planned for the original brew and treat this like a red hopped mead. Worth a shot, eh?

So I pitched the yeast, my first attempt at making mead with ale yeast. Then had dinner and took a break.

After regaining sustenance I embarked on Phase II of my kitchen plans for the day: make banana bread with the spent barley grains from the brewing. But this plan was quickly redirected when I discovered that the very-brown bananas on my counter had mold on the bottom. (I'd intended to make banana bread last weekend, but lacked the energy.) I Googled up [spent grain cookies] and found a recipe that looked reasonable. 1.5 cups flour, 1.5 cups spent grain, eggs, (vegan) butter, dried cranberries, chocolate chips, etc.

I got that batter stirred up and then set to smashing up a giant clump of brown sugar in a mortar and pestle. Kelly asked me what I was doing to make all that noise. She then Googled ways to de-clump brown sugar, so we talked for a minute. I then returned to the kitchen, noticed the oven was heated, and put cookies on the sheets.

While cleaning up I realized that the sugar was still in the mortar. Crap. I'd gotten distracted by the conversation and forgotten that I hadn't finished the batter. So I sprinkled some sugar on the half-baked cookies in the hopes that they wouldn't be totally inedible. But damn, this wasn't a good day for culinary execution.

The cookies taste alright, though I need to find a way to remove the husks from spent grain before I cook with it. It's tasty, but the dry and pokey grain skins are a big distraction.

And the wort tastes alright. It's hard to go wrong with honey water :-) I think the hops was a good move, but so far it really doesn't taste like malt. Maybe I'll make two gallons of barley wort when I transfer this to secondary and go from a 3 gallon hop mead to a 5 gallon full braggot? Or maybe I'll just craft a new braggot recipe and compare the malt level influence.

Given today's adventure, my next brewing project is starting to look a little quixotic. Another Yeast Herders challenge is to use pear, so I got a big can of pear puree a couple months ago, then discovered it seemed to be leaking, but it stopped. Is the can spoiled? Or can I combine it with ~9 pounds of crystalized honey to make something semi-palatable? Tune in next time for "My sobering kitchen."

comments

Red White & Blueberry Ale

Mon, 30 Jul 2018 04:07:14 GMT

On July 4th I started brewing a batch of Red White & Blueberry Ale. For several weeks I was trying to decide what I should brew during the holiday break until inspiration finally hit for this patriotic brew. The idea was to brew a red ale with blueberries, using flaked wheat (plus the yeast and head) to play the role of white.

In the boil I put
5 gal water
4 lbs CBW Golden Light liquid malt extract
2 lbs Red X 12° malt
½ lb flaked wheat
3 lbs blueberry puree
1 oz Liberty pellet hops
1 oz East Kent Golding pellet hops
0.5 tsp Irish moss
1 packet White Labs Irish Ale yeast (WLP004)

Thanks to the blueberry puree, the wort was very brown and cloudy; straining it into the fermenter was a slow and gooey task. With nearly 10 pounds of sugars, vigorous fermentation picked up within hours.

Two weeks later, I racked this to secondary: it was a purple shade of brow and still fairly cloudy. I added 4 pounds of whole blueberries that had gone through four freeze-thaw cycles to break down the cell walls. About a third of these floated right away while the others sunk to the bottom of the carboy, slowly rising in the next couple days as they soaked up the beer.

Today was bottling day. The sediment had settled nicely, with all the blueberries on top, creating a fun visual as the two masses slowly approached each other while I siphoned into the bottling bucket. My siphon placement technique worked well; there was hardly any sediment in the bucket (I usually end up with several millimeters). The beer had also cleared: instead of the cloudy brown, it was a beautiful reddish shade of purple, looking more like a light red wine than a beer. The taste is also pretty exquisite: blueberry and grain flavors both come out in roughly equal proportion; neither are overpowering, and the hops are mild, with no detracting bitterness. The alcohol content is somewhere above 3.7%; I don't know for sure because I'm not sure how much sugar in the whole blueberries got digested by the yeast. Regardless, this should be a great refreshing summer brew, befitting its patriotic and independent identity.

comments

Spruce Maple Ginger Ale

Tue, 04 Jul 2017 06:22:15 GMT

A friend who's interested in home brewing came over today to help me bottle and then brew.

We started by bottling the rhubarb melomel which I started during last year's Independence Day long weekend. I then started losing body mass and caloric intake, making it hard to get up the energy to clean the whole kitchen and bottle that batch of mead. The nice perk of the year-long fermentation process is that I was able to add several stalks worth of fresh rhubarb to the carboy this spring to help bring out the rhubarb flavor. For whatever reason, the final product tastes odd: like a sour rhubarb with a medium-sweet honey flavor and a too-fusile alcohol kick. I'm hoping that it mellows over a couple years in the bottles.

After taking a break for lunch, we proceeded to brew the spruce beer concoction that I've been wanting to do for a while. Bottling and then brewing makes for a long day, but it saves on having to clean the whole kitchen and dining room table twice, and all the gear is already hand and out of the box.

My original plan was to feature spruce needles (in place of hops), a medium liquid malt, ginger, and a pound of honey. When I went to the grocery store for honey and ginger I spotted some maple syrup and realized that that might compliment the spruce as something of a kindred tree spirit sugar. Maple syrup is one of the most expensive sugars you can put in a beer: a quart cost me as much as all the stuff I got at the homebrew store. I chose sparkling amber liquid malt extract for the main fermentable, but the dispenser was really slow (maybe almost out), so I gave up after I got 3 lbs. I rounded out the sugars with 2 lbs of crystal malt grain&emdash;half 40°, half 120°. I also picked up some dried bitter orange peel (to compliment the citrus taste of the needles) and Lallemand Nottingham ale yeast. The clerk started pondering about other possible yeasts and I opined that I had plenty of ways to mess this brew up; choosing a less-than-optimal yeast was not going to be the key factor.

I clipped a loose mason jar worth of fresh blue spruce tips from the tree in our yard. This turned out to be not nearly enough: the spruce flavor is almost undetectable in the wort, even after adding another 50-75% of needs clipped after sampling the brew in progress. Maybe I'll "dry hop" with needles during secondary, or make a needle tea and add it at bottling time.

Nonetheless, the wort is pretty tasty. The malt flavor is very subtle and the ginger is prominent but not intense. The maple syrup doesn't seem to contribute a lot of flavor, but I think it's helping be sweet without strongly malty. Initial reading is about 5% potential alcohol. Like 2015's ginger juniper, folks who don't care for beer may really enjoy this.

ETA: The yeast are really digging this beer. Less than four hours after mixing them in, bubbles are emerging through the airlock in force.

comments